Saturday, May 31, 2014

At least Bradford has principles, even if no one else does

WHATEVER else you
might think of Sue Bradford, she sticks to her principles. You have to respect
her for walking away in disgust from the Internet-Mana pantomime.

Who, other than
the most gullible, is going to believe these two parties have genuine shared
concerns? They are united only by rank opportunism.

Hone Harawira
needs access to Kim Dotcom’s bank account, while Herr Dotcom seems driven by a
personal grudge against John Key and a need for political friends who might
help him avoid extradition. These are hardly a sound basis for a credible
political party.

In his desperation
to make the merger look honourable, Harawira argues that Internet access is
a pressing issue for young Maori. This is a convenient but very recent
conversion. When I last looked, digital access wasn’t even mentioned on the
Mana website.

The $200,000 that
Dotcom reportedly put into the Internet Party [note: since this column was written, we've learned the sum is $3 million] is a far more likely
explanation for Harawira’s enthusiasm. But at least he had the decency to
grin cheekily when he admitted coveting his new ally’s resources. Like Winston
Peters, he often gives the game away by grinning when he knows no one is
fooled.

Unfortunately a
mischievous grin can’t disguise the truth that this alliance is a cynical
exploitation of a deeply flawed electoral system. Theoretically at least, there is a
possibility that Internet-Mana will end up in a classic tail-wags-dog position of power that bears no
relationship to its voter support.

What’s more, the
two parties have undertaken to review their relationship six weeks after the
election. So if they get into Parliament, all bets will be off. Take that,
suckers.

The best we can
hope for is some entertainment as the inherent tensions boil to the surface and
Internet-Mana blows up like Krakatoa. How long, for example, before Mana
office-holder John Minto – a conviction politician in the Bradford mould –
spits the dummy? He can only fool himself for so long that the merger is in the
best interests of the proletariat.

Even on their own,
far- Left parties such as Mana have a glorious history of disembowelling
themselves. Who knows what bloody mayhem could result when the hard-core Left hitches
itself to a wholly incompatible ally like the Dotcom party?

* * *

MY FELLOW columnist
Joe Bennett has written in these pages about his irritation at the tone of
phony familiarity adopted by marketers in their sales pitches. I think I know
what he means.

A few weeks ago I received
a card from Telecom announcing its proposed name change. It began with the words
“Hey there”, which is the type of fatuous greeting you might expect from a
cashier at Starbucks.

Genesis
periodically sends me emails with the subject line “Let’s chat”, apparently
unaware that a chat is a two-way dialogue that requires consent from both
parties. Other companies begin their
promotional messages with the words “Hi guys”, at which point I stop reading.

A common marketing
misjudgment, one guaranteed to raise older people’s hackles, is the presumption
that customers are happy to be addressed by their first names.

Members of the generation
that was brought up to address each other as “Mr” or “Mrs”, at least until
invited to do otherwise, are affronted when employees in the bank or insurance
company, who are usually young enough to be their grandchildren, assume the
right to call them “Joe” or “Mary”.

Most are too
polite to say anything, but quietly grit their teeth in resentment.

The problem, of
course, is that corporate marketing departments are run by Generation X-ers who
assume that older customers will be flattered to be addressed as if they are teenage
airheads.

I’m waiting for a
bright young marketing graduate to send me an email with the introductory
words, “Hey, dude”. It can only be a matter of time.

* * *

BIG GOVERNMENT is
now so all-pervasive that many people find it hard to imagine life without it.

That was evident
from a recent minor party leaders’ debate on TV3’s The Nation, in which ACT leader Jamie Whyte was treated as some
sort of freak - or possibly even a traitor - for daring to suggest that New Zealanders don’t need
constant intervention from the state in every aspect of their lives. This is
clearly a dangerous heresy.

Only days later,
Dr Whyte got a similar going-over from Guyon Espiner on Morning Report. It seems we’ve all become so accustomed to the
smothering influence of Big Government – even to the extent of deciding whether
we should have children – that we can’t comprehend any alternative.

Dr Whyte, of
course, believes the state should get out of our lives, save for a few
essential functions. It’s an idea worth exploring, but you get the impression
that for a lot of people, it’s just too scary.

1 comment:

You're dead right with your comment at the end of the piece about Jamie Whyte. Freedom - being responsible for oneself, and bearing the consequences of one's decisions - is far too scary for the average punter, thanks to generations of mollycoddling by Nanny State.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.